EFR 837: The 9 Types of Anxiety, Best Supplements to Lower Stress, and Science-Based Protocols to Heal Your Anxiety FOREVER with Dr. Nicole Cain

00:00 - Chase (Host) The following is an Operation Podcast production.

00:03 - Nicole (Guest) Gosh, my body is at war. I'm so annoyed. I just want to focus, dr King. Why do I have brain fog? My brain is just, instead of my symptoms or problems, to be solved is how are my symptoms, my body's attempt to solve the problem? Because here's the thing that so many people are not talking about with anxiety, thing that so many people are not talking about with anxiety Normal anxiety is autonomic arousal that you have the personal power to use this data. When it takes away your power and agency, that's when it's problematic.

00:36 - Chase (Host) Maybe a hot take here. I also think anxiety has kind of gotten trendy and it's kind of become this cop out for dealing with your yeah, so we're anxiety bypassing.

00:48 - Nicole (Guest) And if anxiety is the weapon or the excuse or the explanation that you're using to keep yourself in your comfort zone, because I think you're doing yourself a big disservice. Steph, I have a four step process for this.

01:01 - Chase (Host) Would you like to share the four step process With all my heart? Yes, please, All right please.

01:04 - Nicole (Guest) Okay, A really good way to start to figure this out for someone who's listening to this is number one is Hi there, I'm Dr Nicole Kane. I'm the author of the book Panic Proof and I am here on Ever Forward Radio.

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03:21 Anxiety Odds are we all have experienced it. We know someone who has it. Maybe you're listening right now and your anxiety is just at a new level. Well, if that's the case, I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm raising my hand. I'm right here with you and someone who has really been going through it this year with just very challenging mental health year significantly, significantly increased anxiety. Ptsd triggers panic attacks.

03:47 Today's episode with Dr Nicole Kane could not have come at a better time. In fact, she's going to walk us through the nine types of anxiety, but, more specifically, this is the conversation. She is the person to help us heal our anxiety forever. This is the new holistic solution to end your anxiety forever. Author of the brand new book Panic Proof, nicole is a clinician who has empowered thousands to overcome panic and she is offering a revolutionary approach today here on the podcast. In our conversation, you're gonna learn how to shift from asking what's wrong with me to what is my body telling me. You're gonna to learn how your immune, gut or endocrine systems may be a root cause of your panic, and now shifting one piece of the puzzle may, in fact, affect your entire mind and body. You're going to learn how to retrain your stress responses by recalibrating your autonomic nervous system so that it is primed for calm, not for panic. Not to mention the latest research into holistic supplements, herbs and psychobiotics for stopping panic and creating calm. You're going to want to share this one. You're going to want to save this one. You're going to want to rewind and take notes. This is a masterclass in understanding what anxiety is, what panic is the difference and, more importantly, the cues our body is giving us to put us on the right path to heal.

05:10 If you're new to the show, welcome. If you're coming back. Thank you so much for returning to Everford Radio. I have one ask for you here today listening.

05:17 If you would just whatever podcast platform you're listening to Apple, spotify, whatever if you find value in today's episode or any episode, if you would just give us a follow, subscribe to the show, follow on your favorite podcast platform of choice. It really, really, really does a lot of things, for the show Helps us grow, helps us reach even more amazing people attract even more amazing guests like Nicole today, and it's just my simple request. So if this helps you move forward in life, helps you live a life ever forward, then smashing that follow button or subscribe button would really be a great way to say thank you to me and the guest. And with that let's welcome Dr Nicole Cain to the show.

05:53 I'm wondering if you could help us understand a little bit more of the herbs, the adaptogens, the nootropics, if you will, or maybe not nootropics, but supplements out there that might be helpful for stress anxiety. Can you rank these supplements in order of importance for calming anxiety? So one through one, through five. How would you kind of rank them, one being the best, five being the fifth best, not the worst, but the fifth best, okay, cbd.

06:21 - Nicole (Guest) Okay, cbd is number one for anxiety If the anxiety is caused by an abnormality in the endocannabinoid system.

06:33 - Chase (Host) How do we know if we have an abnormality in our endocannabinoid system?

06:37 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah. So if you find that your body has lots of aches and lots of pains in addition to the symptoms of anxiety or autonomic arousal, and so some people, when they become aroused, it will show up in the muscles and the nerves, and so they may feel tense and tight and restless and agitated, they may get headaches, or maybe they even zone out and get dissociated, like they don't feel like they're quite in touch with their body, and they do well when they take things that support that. So we call those exocannabinoids, and CBD is an example of that. And so if the root cause of why you're experiencing those symptoms is due to an imbalance in your endocannabinoid production, then taking something to replace that can be game changing. So it's about treating the cause.

07:28 - Chase (Host) That makes total sense as to why, when I take CBD for calming purposes for, you know, high stress, high anxiety, uh, I get so many of the the physical benefits as well. My, my body feels relaxed. I feel the benefits maybe from like a hard workout. It's a lot more physically calming, physically calming that then helps my mind calm. I'd say maybe secondary personally.

07:49 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah.

07:50 - Chase (Host) Interesting, okay, cool. So CBD, what about reishi?

07:53 - Nicole (Guest) I love reishi mushrooms, and one of the great things that we see with reishi is that it increases your brain's ability to heal itself. And so there's this thing. It's called BDNF, which is brain derived neurotrophic factor, and reishi can increase that. So it's something that increases neuroplasticity, and neuroplasticity is what helps our brain grow and heal.

08:18 And so somebody who's been under a lot of stress for a lot of years military right, that's like you have to be on it, you have to be really on your game physically, emotionally or somebody who's feels like they've been burning the candle at both ends healthcare workers healthcare workers, right, and so if you feel like, oh my gosh, I feel like so exhausted, I feel brain fog, I feel fatigue, but maybe even that wired and tired is something that's going to improve your immune system, improve your nervous system in your brain and increase that BDNF and I love mushrooms for that.

08:55 - Chase (Host) Team, functional mushrooms team. All mushrooms really over here. But you know again, actually a BDNF and reishi in the coffee as well.

09:02 - Nicole (Guest) So good. So where would?

09:03 - Chase (Host) you put reishi in the one through five scale.

09:06 - Nicole (Guest) If your symptoms are due to burnout, then let's put that as a two. It's really good.

09:12 - Chase (Host) L-theanine.

09:13 - Nicole (Guest) L-theanine is amazing for GABA. I was driving down the road and I cracked myself out on coffee one day without theanine in it, right. So I was in medical school and I was drinking coffee. I was going for my exams and then I'm feeling like why am I having a panic attack in the car and like my mochas and my right hand and my steering wheels and my left?

09:33 - Chase (Host) hand. I don't know.

09:34 - Nicole (Guest) And I'm like I don't know. So I like got to school and I talked to my friend. She's like oh, just take a little bit of theanine, and I did. And theanine in particular is amazing for chest anxiety. So if you have anxiety or nervousness that shows up in the chest with heart palpitations, or even if you feel like I can't get a big enough breath, you're just trying to breathe in deeper and harder and harder and then you're like hyperventilating. Theanine is amazing for that, and it's also been studied to increase GABA, which is that neurotransmitter that we associate with feeling relaxed and sleepy, that Benzos like Xanax works on.

10:13 I love theanine. I take theanine. I brought it on this trip. I have theanine with me.

10:18 - Chase (Host) Sorry if I missed it, but where would you put L-theanine in kind of that one through five hierarchy, if I?

10:28 - Nicole (Guest) was being sent to a desert island and I could only bring three supplements. The anine would be one of them. All right, what would be the other two? Um, probably lion's mane mushroom would be number two, and I think the third one would probably be maybe like bacopa. It's an herb, oh bacopa, it is like the best nootropic. It's an herb traditionally used in Ayurveda. Its other name is brahmi.

10:51 - Chase (Host) Oh, brahmi, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, okay.

10:54 - Nicole (Guest) It's so good for your brain. It's been studied to improve cognition, to improve IQ, to improve mood stability, to improve nervous system function. And then, if we went down that whole, Ayurveda rabbit hole.

11:12 - Chase (Host) It balances your doshas, and so for your listeners who don't- know what is this dosha?

11:14 - Nicole (Guest) talk is it considered an adaptogen. It's an adaptogen it helps you adapt to stress. Yeah, and our doshas are in Ayurveda. They describe the different ways we can become stressed and go out of balance, and so the objective is to put us back in balance, and Brahmi or Bhikkhu is one of them that helps almost all people.

11:30 - Chase (Host) Okay, so speaking of ashwagandha, my personal favorite adaptogen, would you take an ashwagandha and where does it fall in the one through five?

11:38 - Nicole (Guest) Ooh, I love ashwagandha. It's especially good for men. It men it can. Um they talk about how it's like he who possesses 100 wives in that ashwagandha can boost libido, which sex drive. It can boost in endurance and performance and mood. But when you take it, in help with testosterone too.

11:59 It can help with testosterone, which is interesting so for women. So if any of the women that you have in your audience take ashwagandha, if they have a tendency towards too much androgen or male sex hormone production, they may get acne from it. But there is a female ashwagandha.

12:14 - Chase (Host) What is?

12:15 - Nicole (Guest) that it's called wild asparagus or shatavari.

12:18 - Chase (Host) I haven't heard of that.

12:19 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah. So if any women are like I've tried ashwagandha and it's just like I'm not sure about it, go try shatavari. It's amazing. It increases sex drive and fertility. So if anyone's struggling with imbalances in their hormones or fertility or energy, it's an aphrodisiac, just like ashwagandha can be, but this, it has an affinity for women. So it's like ashwagandha is over here like the holy grail for men, and then shatavari. It's like you give her a little shatavari and you take a little ashwagandha.

12:51 - Chase (Host) Learning so much already. Love this and I thought I knew things Okay. Last one, which we already kind of talked about GABA. Where does it fall on your hierarchy for supplements for calming anxiety?

13:03 - Nicole (Guest) So with GABA is. We love GABA because GABA makes us feel relaxed, it makes us feel calm, but the molecule is generally too big to effectively cross the blood-brain barrier. So when we take things like a GABA supplement, like lots of companies they have, you just take GABA chewables. But some people they notice a little bit of benefit because it's affecting your gut microbiome and it can get through some of your peripheral cells but it's not very efficient at getting through the blood-brain barrier. So if anxiety is your main thing and maybe it's thought anxiety or nervous system anxiety and you really need that effect in the brain is gaba may not be as effective as a precursor, which would be more like theanine or taurine or anositol or glycine.

13:46 - Chase (Host) Okay, yeah, this is what we hear as carriers. You know, you know certain things, certain supplements are more beneficial when they're taken with a carrier that basically kind of like latch on, it's like a, a ferry, if you will, to get where they really need to be.

13:59 - Nicole (Guest) That's a really great way to think about it.

14:01 - Chase (Host) Okay.

14:01 - Nicole (Guest) So then the question is for that individual is the carrier? The carrier can get in through that door, through the blood brain barrier, but is the GABA molecule that it's? Bringing in. It's like dragging this Santa's bag, if you will, and it's like clogging the door and won't go in Some people that can't get in in little amounts.

14:20 - Chase (Host) Santa's bag of all the goodies.

14:22 - Nicole (Guest) Yes, the GABA goodies.

14:25 - Chase (Host) What are three quick anxiety relief techniques that anyone can do right here, right now?

14:31 - Nicole (Guest) Number one extend the exhale. When I was studying in psychology, they were just like use the breath. And I'm like I am tired of being told to breathe. Give me something more effective.

14:42 - Chase (Host) If I could breathe, I wouldn't be having anxiety, you know.

14:44 - Nicole (Guest) Exactly. But when they hooked me up to biofeedback and I got to see the actual results, then I was more interested. I'm like, okay, now we're talking and so when we study the breath, we are able to see how elongating the exhale can activate the vagus nerve, and I think that's something that you've talked a decent amount about. And so, for those who are a little bit new to that, the vagus nerve it's not the slot machines in Nevada, it's vagus like that wandering for Latin, and it connects your brain and your gut, and that's that bi-directional superhighway, right when your gut's talking to your brain and your brain's talking to your gut and then your gut's like hey, hormones, do this. Hey, nervous system, do that, hey, immune system. We got to make a change here. Your number one inroad for hacking that is your vagus nerve, and the easiest hack that you have, where you don't have to bring it in a suitcase or make it really obvious to everyone around you, is to elongate the exhale.

15:42 - Chase (Host) Okay, what are two more?

15:45 - Nicole (Guest) Temperature is really big.

15:47 And so in dialectical behavioral therapy, marshall Linehan used to talk about the dive response, where they observed in deep sea divers how, when they went deeper into the ocean and they had that pressure of the ocean around them, that they would get more of that Vegas kind of response.

16:02 So their nervous system would go into a relaxed parasympathetic, so their blood pressure would go down, their heart rate would go down, and so then she found we can reproduce that with cold. So she would teach her patients to just put your face in a bucket of ice water. But I don't have a bucket of ice water, but there's a better option. And so if you've made a first aid pack, you can get online there's the size of your wallet these little chemical packs and you can shake them up and they get instantly cold so you could put it in your pocket. So if you're going to go and you're going to do a giant speaking engagement, you're like totally amazing, you're going to talk to some of the most influential people in the world. Your body's like we're excited, oh, and also we're freaking out, and you're like.

16:49 I don't have a bucket of ice water here, but I've got the next best thing. So you take that out of your pocket, you shake it up and then you apply it around your eyes. I talked to Brendan Burchard about this. You put it around your eyes, you put it in the back, in the front of your neck and on your chest. Vagus nerve puts you back into your calm, centered self okay.

17:06 - Chase (Host) So the placement. Is the placement as important, as important as the temperature? Or is it just a matter of getting contrast to the skin?

17:15 - Nicole (Guest) oh, that's a really good question. The research has suggested that you'll get better results around the eyes, but the vagus nerve runs kind of along the jugular vein and and so if you're thinking like the mastoid and then the neck, that can provide that cold more close to that. But a lot of people feel really hot. So if we could just decrease their body temperature and applying it to other areas, Okay, number three will be a third quick anxiety relief technique.

17:42 Sour in your mouth and so cranial nerve 10, vagus nerve, goes through the root of the tongue, and so we know we can stimulate that just like keep in your, your man bag or your fanny pack, if you're hip, and just pop sour candy, an orange, sour lemon, something that's going to shock the body a little bit, make you salivate, that stimulates vagus and it's fun.

18:05 - Chase (Host) That was a tip brought up by my therapist this year as well, kind of navigating panic attacks. She was like we're building my little. I always have my backpack. You know, old military habit. I got my ruck, if you will with me. I always got stuff with me and, lucky for me, my brother runs a sour candy company, and so I'm like Max, thank you. Your business venture is like saving my mental health. I always keep bags in there just to kind of like, just they're so sour, and it really shocks the system.

18:31 So a panic pack, so I teach about that.

18:34 - Nicole (Guest) This is exactly what you're doing, and so in the panic pack you would put all of those things that you need to have on hand. So if you need a Xanax or a medication, there is no shame for that. You need a Xanax or a medication, there is no shame for that. But I always teach people how can we become empowered so that we don't have to lean on that as our only solution, but rather what else might help. So the sour candy fidgets can be really good because they stimulate brainstem, so they bring us out of that emotional brain activation that autopilot of fear brings us back in our ascended, grounded body. So fidgets, especially the spiky ones, it's like a ring that you can put on and it's spiky.

19:11 - Chase (Host) Huh, I was going to say what like grabbing a pen, kind of just playing around with it, or actually like a fidget spinner kind of thing.

19:17 - Nicole (Guest) Everybody has their own fidget of choice, and so I teach people. I'm like, just get like four different kinds, experiment them, see what your body really likes. I used to have a horrible fear of flying, and so the only fidget that would work well for me is something that's really shocking, Like the. The sour candy right you were talking about is a fidget that's like a worry stone. My body's like I'll destroy this worry stone, I don't care Versus something that's a little bit more like spiky.

19:44 - Chase (Host) Interesting To get that kind of tactile feedback.

19:47 - Nicole (Guest) You got to have that like tactile. It's got to be something inputting into the body and the nervous system that's as strong and disruptive as the autonomic arousal.

19:57 - Chase (Host) What about? I've seen some people with kind of more chronic anxiety, or even when it is an acute situation. I'm calling this a fidget, but they'll kind of um, there's probably a stretch, but I'll say self mutilation, this is a big stretch. And what I mean by that is, uh, you know, picking their thumbnails or fingernails or like the skin around their nail, or even kind of like pinching the skin as a way to kind of get tactile feedback. Is that the same thing?

20:23 - Nicole (Guest) Very similar and you're bringing to mind trichotillomania, which is where people will pull. Oh like, pull your hair, they'll pull their hair, their eyebrows, and so when someone does that, there's a stimulation, there's this surge of dopamine that can happen as a result of that, and so, even if it hurts a little bit, it can help bring them back into their body. They may be so dissociated, and I can talk about the neuroscience of what's happening but it's something that's bringing them back into their body, even if it's painful.

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23:32 - Nicole (Guest) Today there's a group of parts of your brain. They're called the default mode network, and so these groups of the brain. They're like autopilot. We're going to run from that tiger because we don't need to analyze what the tiger had for breakfast and what its existential belief system is on eating meat or being plant-based. We don't want to think about that, we just need to run. So these areas of the brain. It's more amygdala based, so the limbic system, big feelings and, as an aside, um, very highly sensitive. Intelligent people tend to have larger amygdalas. On brain scans.

24:09 - Chase (Host) Why do you think that is?

24:11 - Nicole (Guest) It could be that they could be biological, maybe they inherited that tendency. It could also be that the way that it's been used, and so if you have lots and lots of trauma and adversity that you've gone through, then the amygdala has to occupy more volume, more space, in order to be more efficient. Of course.

24:30 And so so you have this bear, this tiger, this creature coming out of the woods. These areas of the brain are like run away, right. So it's like a car driving cruise control down the highway, not taking any exits. But if you're trying to go to sleep and that part of the brain is going into default mode autonomic arousal what people will describe is I can't think logically, I can't get myself out of it, and then well-intended friend over here is like just breathe, and then you want to punch them Right.

25:01 And so what we have to do is we have to shift out of default mode, autopilot mode, and shift into this other mode, and this is called the executive control network. This is your dream team. This is like this brilliant human that you have behind the cameras over here, right? So running the show, keeping things logical, keeping things organized, making decisions like I don't want to be an autopilot, I think we're going to take this exit. But what we see in the neuroscience is these two parts, these two systems, don't exist at the same time. So when we're in autonomic arousal and we're in that red zone and we're in panic zone, is the first thing we have to do is we have to bring you out of that, get you out of that autopilot default mode so that your dream team, your executive mode can come up. And that's your logical brain and that's going to help you figure out why you feel the way you feel. And listen to brilliant podcasts so that you can then prevent it from happening.

25:58 - Chase (Host) That makes total sense, and it begs the question for me do people have, do people who have, larger amygdalas? Are they therefore, you said, more creative, more intelligent? Uh, or do we become more creative and more intelligent by growing our amygdala? Is it like correlation or causation kind of thing?

26:19 - Nicole (Guest) yeah, so the chicken or the egg? Both? Yeah, I think we see this in genetic predispositions and this is this is an opinion. It would be interesting to see research on this is that if somebody inherits a mutation in a gene, the mao gene, and that gene results in chemical changes in their body, that codes their brain and so MAO genes we call this the warrior gene, and so oftentimes people who have a mutation in the warrior gene, they feel things bigger, so that chemical predisposition could then change the brain development. Or if somebody inherits this larger brain development, that may then provoke a feedback loop of chemicals that then maintain it.

27:06 Because here's the thing that so many people are not talking about with anxiety is you have the mental health world and they're like top down, let's analyze it, let's talk about from that dream team, the logical team, why you should or shouldn't feel that way and all the coping skills. And then you have thank goodness for these new researchers that are doing bottom up techniques and they're like OK, listen to the body. What is the body telling you? Interoception hormones, what's going on with all of that? But what we're really lacking, and we have such a huge opportunity for, is looking at the other adaptive mechanisms. So what do I mean by that? So if somebody is, they're born to a family and they have a bigger amygdala, let's just say they get an MRI study. It's a little bit bigger. So let's say that in that family there's been generations and generations of passed on trauma, so that person could theoretically adapt to that trauma by being better able to read their caretaker's moods, to be able to tell like Ooh, they're, they're feeling frustrated, I need to fawn.

28:14 - Chase (Host) Is this called empathy?

28:15 - Nicole (Guest) It's a yes, it's big empathy.

28:18 - Chase (Host) Okay, when we like traditional empathy, when we say or think empathy, is this what you're talking about or is it kind of a personified version?

28:25 - Nicole (Guest) It's like highly sensitive empathy.

28:27 It's like empathy that's turned up, so empathy like developmentally, like being able to feel the feelings of others.

28:34 But then we have these people who may then become parentified, like they have to navigate and care for their parents, and so that which has made them hypervigilant when they go later into life is kind of like putting on a big winter coat when you live in Virginia and it's really cold there, and then you move to California and if you don't adapt to the climate change or the situational change and take off that coat, that which may have helped you, that big amygdala, that empathy, is now making you more easily offended or you second guess all your conversations, and so what it is is we're not talking about the secondary, tertiary on and on and on adaptive mechanisms taking place and so if I'm I grow up with this family, my gut microbiome will change to help me be more hypervigilant for that family, and then my gut microbiome is going to encode my hormones and then my hormones are going to make me more hypervigilant in that family and then my immune system is going to make more histamine and then I get allergies and panic attacks and then I get chest anxiety, right.

29:44 So it's like all of these domino effects is what we're not talking about as much. I think that's changing.

29:50 - Chase (Host) Yeah, yeah.

29:51 - Nicole (Guest) But I know that was kind of a lot.

29:53 - Chase (Host) No, I love that. Yeah, really really interesting stuff. I'm going to control myself because I feel like I would just deviate into a totally different podcast than what I have prepared. But is there a difference, and what is the difference between a panic attack and an anxiety attack?

30:08 - Nicole (Guest) I love this question. So think about this on a continuum. So on one end is the green light, and this is when you're feeling calm and relaxed and chill and grounded and connected. In polyvagal theory, this is like your ventral vagal. You feel like, relaxed, like yourself, and then something is going to start to change, your autonomic arousal is going to start to increase a little bit and then, if that doesn't get tethered with, then you're going to go into the yellow zone, which is like, oh, I'm irritable or oh, I'm feeling a little nervous or I'm feeling kind of restless and overwhelmed, like I feel like I need to just like go to the gym and just like run it off and then, if it continues, then we get into the red light zone, which is crisis.

30:49 And so what we see is that autonomic arousal exists on a spectrum and it's a completely normal phenomenon. But if you have autonomic arousal when you're being chased by a tiger, that feels totally appropriate. It's all about context. So if you have it outside of context of personal power and being able to leverage that for deeper healing, then it feels terrifying. So the medical system will differentiate it as like well, anxiety is something that happens as a flare in your day-to-day state versus panic comes out of the blue.

31:29 But really we're seeing the science, research that, if you don't hear the whispers and it intensifies, it will become shouts. So I think that more the continuum is a more accurate way to look at the two.

31:38 - Chase (Host) I love that description more. The continuum is a more accurate way to look at the two. I love that description. It's something that I talk about a lot on the show and has been a great kind of personal guide for me, and you know whether we're talking about anxiety, stress or an acute or chronic illness, or you know anything in the human experience if we learn how to pay attention to the whispers before they turn into a scream, we are going to just be in such a better physical, mental, emotional, spiritual place in our lives and our health.

32:03 - Nicole (Guest) You're talking about a paradigm shift.

32:05 - Chase (Host) Oh, absolutely A total paradigm shift.

32:08 - Nicole (Guest) Instead of looking at your, your whispers is like oh my God, now my heart is palpitating. Oh, I feel so irritated. Why are they interrupting me? They got here early, right, right, so so, gosh, my body is at war. I'm so annoyed. I just want to focus. Dr Cain, why do I have brain fog? My brain is. It's just give me a supplement, and so what you're you're pointing out, which makes my heart sore, is a paradigm shift to, instead of my symptoms or problems to be solved is how are my symptoms? My body's attempt to solve the problem, and then we have the opportunity to not just live, but thrive.

32:51 - Chase (Host) Absolutely yeah.

32:52 - Nicole (Guest) That's like that's when we, when we oblige wonderment and people look at us and they're like where did you get that? I want some. It's like well, I looked at my anxiety. I became its friend. I listened to my body. I loved it and I honored it. I detoxified, I was mindful, I put theanine in my mocha.

33:12 - Chase (Host) I want to bring up this quote that I share a lot on the show, on such such subject matters as this, and it's from a uh, a former guest had Benjamin and Azria Becker on the show, and I'm talking more cause I'm trying to find my note and it's not coming up, so I'm just going to wing it. I'm going to paraphrase here I love it, and this is from their book becoming B? E Q O M I N G-O-M-I-N-G. Are you familiar?

33:37 - Nicole (Guest) Yes, I am Very good.

33:40 - Chase (Host) Love them, and so it was something along the lines of you know, the goal of all of this work is to. The goal is to become I almost don't even want to say it because I'm going to butcher it but is to become so in tune with your nervous system, have such a calmness to your nervous system that, you know, by walking into a room, just your presence alone allows the nervous systems of everybody else to regulate without you saying a single word. Be as I'm sorry for butchering your quote, but you know something along those lines. Because when I think about moving ever forward in a life, when I think about what matters most to me and what I would be hopeful for in any room that I'm in, is for every person to have done the work enough to be in any room, in any situation, to where they can feel so comfortable and so rooted and so at peace with who they are that they can be put into a room, whether they know the people or they don't, that they stay grounded, they stay rooted, they stay calm and centered. That then allows everybody else to do the same as much as possible, because when I walk into a room and I feel that, I feel that and when I don't, I don't, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

34:54 What if I told you that there was something that you could do, that in as little as two days, your cells could kickstart the recycling and rejuvenation process called mitophagy tagging damaged, worn out mitochondria for recycling. And then what if I told you, in that same process, in about a month, you could have new, healthy mitochondria. One month in I'm talking your cells are transforming In fact. Damaged mitochondria step aside to make way for healthier ones, are transforming In fact. Damaged mitochondria step aside to make way for healthier ones, optimizing your cellular health. And then what if I told you that by day 60, you could have enhanced endurance? The benefits are beginning to show here. You're going to notice an improved endurance and even VO2 max. This is a measure of your body's oxygen utilization during exercise. And then let's fast forward even a little bit more Day 120, just a couple months in. What if I told you that you could see an increase in your muscle strength? Four months in, your muscles are reaping the rewards. You're getting stronger, recovering faster post-exercise and experiencing less inflammation.

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37:44 - Nicole (Guest) Have you ever done this experiment? When I was in medical school, I had a very eclectic teacher. He was native, he lived in Phoenix, where I went to medical school out there, and so he would teach us about like the energy, the plants and the soul of the plants. We had other teachers who are very much like the isoflavones and the resveratrol and the cavaloctone polyphenols and nutrients like dreaming at night I'm like polyphenols.

38:11 This teacher was like I want you to just talk to the plants and I want you to feel the plants. And he had us do this exercise once where he was like okay, I want you to feel your energy and I want you to imagine pushing your energy out really really big, and then I want you to then practice sucking your energy in really really small. And he had us go walk around in public places and do that exercise no way and report back.

38:33 - Chase (Host) I love this.

38:34 - Nicole (Guest) And so what?

38:35 - Chase (Host) happened.

38:35 - Nicole (Guest) I bet you can guess what happened. I bet.

38:37 - Chase (Host) I can guess yeah, but I want to hear you say it yeah, yeah.

38:40 - Nicole (Guest) So when, by and large, the majority of the people who, when they pushed their energy out people, were noticing them, they were smiling at them and they weren't blindly running into them.

38:55 - Chase (Host) Had a more positive interaction.

38:56 - Nicole (Guest) It was like positive and they were like wow, that felt like really nice, that felt really good. And then people who sucked their energy in it's like people would zip by them, almost clip their shoulders so they didn't see them and they felt almost kind of invisible. And I tried that and that's been something that I've really found to be so valuable. It's as you were describing I try to go into a room and I try to fill myself with light and love, curiosity and fascination for the person I'm going to be with, breathe that in and kind of allow my energy field to expand, not to like push them away or, to you know, create like a bubble boy kind of phenomenon, but just like if my energy connects with, may it be light and may it be love.

39:41 - Chase (Host) That's a great practice, I mean. I think if the listener just kind of pauses right there and thinks about what that might look and feel like in their own life, that's extremely powerful, a very practical tool that we can apply right now. What are three symptoms of anxiety that might be considered embarrassing? You think? For most people.

40:02 - Nicole (Guest) I write a story in my book about Matthew who has got anxiety, and it started when he was a little guy and he was having some anticipatory anxiety before going on stage with his, his student choir. They're going to sing a little concert and and he was like my tummy feels kind of upset, I don't know, I think I need to go to the bathroom. And so he like kind of tried to get the teacher to come over and they're like matthew, you just, you gotta, we gotta go on stage. So he had an accident and so the the child behind him in line was aware of it got very, very, very upset, made a whole scene, and this was super traumatic for Matthew.

40:40 And so the brain is really associative. So the brain starts to make these connections between this feeling in my tummy, feeling nervous, mortification, and then he developed this horrible, horrible trauma of gut anxiety, and so his life just got really small. He developed agoraphobia, where he was afraid to go anywhere in public just in case he would lose bowel control again. And so one of the sections in the book is like well, why does panic make you poop? Why do we get horrible digestive symptoms sometimes when we're scared? And so that would probably be the most embarrassing thing for people. Another embarrassing thing I think I see quite often is when people have involuntary movements or vocalizations or jerks.

41:28 - Chase (Host) So like, uh, like a Tourette or a Twitch.

41:31 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah, like Twitch is like I can't hold still, or I'm jerking or I'm restless or I like, like vocal sounds and so this is nervous system anxiety. So people may be restless or moving or jerking or trembling. It's these things that we can't hide from other people, because it's one thing if my heart is pounding and like nobody knows, but if those jerks are coming out and we can see them, that's embarrassing. And that happened to me when my anxiety was at rock bottom. I remember I had a new patient and I'm the doctor who's supposed to know how to solve their anxieties and underneath the desk my, my major muscle groups were jerking and twitching because I hadn't slept in days. It was. It was horrible, awful, debilitating insomnia and panic attacks. It was just unrelenting for over a year, despite all the medications, all the supplements. I was on such a high dose of benzodiazepines and ambien at that time that when I would go to the pharmacy to check out, the pharmacist is like this could kill you yeah, what a combination yeah.

42:45 And yet I would get like one hour of sleep. And so when, when the body starts to produce these nervous system jerks and people are like oh my God, like everyone's going to see it and that's super embarrassing. So I think the gut and the nervous system, um, also in the nervous system, I think of stammers and so people who stutter or stammer when they get aroused or they get anxious or they get nervous, and then everybody can tell a stammer, and so I feel like that is kind of like a secondary. And so maybe the third most you said embarrassing yeah.

43:20 - Chase (Host) Yeah, or maybe even one um that people might think is super embarrassing when it comes to their anxiety, maybe even because they think more people can tell what's happening than is obvious, because we're more aware of it Right At that point.

43:36 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah, I feel like when people are having a panic attack and their face flushes and they're sweating, that feels really embarrassing for people and that's much more common than the other two. The other two I see when it's more into the red light zone. But even if you get a little bit nervous, we'll, we can start sweating when we're in the yellow light zone and that can be really embarrassing. You're like mopping up your sweat. People are like what's the matter with you?

44:03 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I think um a lot of those symptoms, you know. I wonder how much of it is that happens more or more consistently because it becomes so psychosomatic, you know.

44:14 - Nicole (Guest) Yes, absolutely yeah. So it that bi-directional communication. It's like, have you ever heard the? All right, I want you to think of anything except for the, the white horse yeah you can think of don't think of elephant.

44:29 - Chase (Host) Don't think about elephant. Yeah, immediately, just think of.

44:31 - Nicole (Guest) That's all you do is you just think about what you can't think about, and so you just create more of what you don't want. And so if it's like don't hypervent, don't hyperventilate, don't hyperventilate, oh yeah, you're gonna, you're hyperventilate.

44:43 - Chase (Host) What would you say is normal anxiety and what is an anxiety disorder?

44:49 - Nicole (Guest) Normal anxiety is autonomic arousal that you have the personal power to to use this data. So it's when it becomes when it takes away your power and agency. That's when it's problematic. So the the goal of the book, it's end anxiety forever. It's not that you'll never have autonomic arousal again because you need it.

45:13 Being aroused is good. It helps you get excited, helps you wake up in the morning. It helps you have fun on a roller coaster. It helps you get super excited when you have a in the morning. It helps you have fun on a roller coaster. It helps you get super excited when you have a baby and you're like yelling and crying and like, ah right, autonomic arousal is good and autonomic arousal that's like, oh my gosh, I'm driving through this intersection and this person's running a light and so my body just floors it and we go that's good, it gave you power. But the problem is when it starts to shift out of the domain of your personal agency and it starts to control your life, like Matthew right, when he couldn't leave his house because his anxiety was stealing his life and making it smaller.

45:52 - Chase (Host) So I think that's uh, to kind of piggyback on that. I want to make kind of a maybe a hot take here. In one way, I'm very glad that the world of stress and anxiety is a lot more top of mind for people, I think these days. It's certainly we have a lot more content about it and more podcasts. I mean, how many TikTok people blow up because they just share their anxiety ridden life and in one way I think it's great, you know, the more we can become aware of things in our life and help other people and help us at the same time. I'm all for it, as long as you're not hurting yourself or anybody else.

46:26 But I also think anxiety has kind of gotten trendy. I see a lot of people use that, as you know. It's oh, my anxiety, my, my anxiety, this, my anxiety, that, and it's kind of become this cop out for dealing with your shit. You know, or just you know, following up with people communicating or just you know, flaking, a lot of different things. And I'm not here to knock anybody. You know, when you have a panic attack or a severe anxiety disorder, I I'm there, I've been there. It can reroute your life and you can't really have a lot of control over that sometimes, but I do kind of feel like we're at a point where do you really have high level anxiety, or are you just using that to get out of something or using that to not deal with adulting today?

47:13 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah.

47:13 - Chase (Host) Where do you land on that?

47:14 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah, I think that's brilliant. Uh, anxiety bypassing.

47:18 - Chase (Host) Ooh, I like that yeah.

47:19 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah. So we're anxiety bypassing. Am I using and leveraging it to avoid something, or am I expanding my window of tolerance? So the window of tolerance I know you know about this, but in case your audience doesn't is that is the zone, your comfort zone. It's the zone Scott Miller talks about of proximal development. When I'm in my comfort zone, I can know what I can do, I know what to expect. I'm chilling, but if I don't want to go out of my comfort zone, I don't want to be uncomfortable, I don't want to go out of the zone of proximal development, I don't want to grow.

47:51 And if anxiety is the weapon or the excuse or the explanation that you're using to keep yourself in your comfort zone is, I think you're doing yourself a big disservice, because where you grow is where you're uncomfortable. And so the question is is okay? Well, how do I honor and cause we're all about acceptance and honoring how do I honor and notice my anxiety but then not let it stop there and allow myself to grow? So I have, that's the whole fourth step. What you're saying is brilliant and it's the whole fourth step. I have a four step process for this.

48:23 - Chase (Host) Okay, Um. Would you like to share the four step process With all my heart? Yes, please.

48:27 - Nicole (Guest) Okay. So when you go into autonomic arousal and you're in that yellow zone, red zone, the first thing we want to do is get your, your, your executive control team on board. You want to get your logical brain on board. So that means you got to get out of your anxious brain first. So these are going to be your panic packs, so it's going to be cold, it's going to be exercise, it's going to be temperature, it's going to be smell, taste, anything that gets you back in your body. So that's step one get back in your body. And so then step two is now that we have your logical brain back on board, then you're going to do all the top-down techniques that they've been talking about since the days of Freud, right? Anything cognitive, behavioral therapy, talk therapy, going to coaching, whatever you've got to do, like, what was the activator for me? What made me nervous?

49:13 - Chase (Host) Learning, my triggers.

49:14 - Nicole (Guest) What are my triggers? Oh, I sat staring at my phone for four hours and my body went into the salience network, creating autonomic arousal, whatever it is right. And so that's that. Step two is logical brain on board. Step three is now we're bridging the gap between the brain and the body. So that's neuroception and taroception, it's meta-awareness. These words are just referring to a similar phenomenon, where we become aware of what the heck our body is saying and doing.

49:44 Okay, and then the fourth step, which you were brilliantly pointing out, is that is where we reprogram, we recalibrate, we repattern those old installed habits that have been holding us back, those old installed habits that have been holding us back that coat that we put on in Virginia, that's no longer useful for us. What you may have inherited from your family, your culture, what happened to you, what didn't happen to you, whether it may be neglect or loss, and we recalibrate that. So what the heck does that look like? So that involves putting yourself into autonomic arousal, and then you put yourself out of it, you put yourself into calm so that you practice. It's like if I want to run a marathon, I have to work my way up to it. I don't just try to calm my body and stay calm all the time and bypass and never do anything. I have to do a high ropes course or go talk on a podcast, or I have to fly on that airplane, or I have to something that arouses you, maybe high-intensity interval training, something that arouses you.

50:47 And then what calms the body Because we've seen in trauma especially, is that it's like starting a car and so the engine is revving, but in trauma oftentimes we don't see a completion of that process, so then we reenact it again and again, and again. And so that fourth step is you have to take yourself out of your comfort zone. You can't anxiety bypass because you're not going to move ever forward if you're not extending out of your comfort zone and doing all four steps. But the most important I would say is arousal. Calm again and again, and again, because then when panic strikes, you've done a thousand times, you know exactly how to calm.

51:24 - Chase (Host) You fall back on your training. You fall back on your training. Yeah, You've talked a lot thus far about how there's clearly a mind-body connection to stress and anxiety. Is anxiety more in the body or more in the mind Is? Should we start with one versus the other, or is there a way to kind of differentiate between oh no, this is physical anxiety or this is mental anxiety?

51:51 - Nicole (Guest) I think that it depends on what you're adapting to, and so if a really good way to start to figure this out for someone who's listening to this is number one is, I would try to figure out what kind of anxiety that you're experiencing, and I've sort of looked at all of the research. How are all the different types of anxiety manifesting for people? And then if we can reorganize them into more logical systems, instead of you're aroused or you're not aroused, then we can say, okay, I have anxiety, and when I get anxious, my bowels get to, they get churny and bloaty and I have a little bit of heart palpitations. But like if I had a magic wand, I would want to fix my gut, please, right? So then I would say, okay, that's consistent with gut anxiety. So then we ask the question why? Why are you getting gut anxiety? Is your gut making you anxious or are you making your gut anxious?

52:46 - Chase (Host) Exactly, yeah, yeah. Should I be popping a Zofran or do I need to meditate?

52:50 - Nicole (Guest) Right, it's probably a little bit of both.

52:52 - Chase (Host) Zofran is amazing, by the way. It does many wonders for gut anxiety. Yeah.

52:58 - Nicole (Guest) So if you had chest anxiety as an aside, if your heart was palpitating, Zofran wouldn't work. So that makes me curious about the gut. So then, okay, All right, no, I've got anxiety. Well, what the heck is my gut trying to tell me? So then we start to collect data on your gut. Okay, what am I eating? Am I just chugging inflammatory foods? Am I eating a bunch of sugar? Do I have evidence of yeast Right? Or did I take a high dose antibiotic in the past? My my friend recently. She was living in Mexico and she got some like awful plague of some sort.

53:34 - Chase (Host) And you're like yes, I've been there like two months ago.

53:37 - Nicole (Guest) Oh my.

53:38 - Chase (Host) Yeah.

53:39 - Nicole (Guest) So gut, anxiety. So thank God for the antibiotic. Penicillin's been like one of the best inventions ever. But that means that we have to do some cleanup. And so the question is, is it the chicken or is it the egg? And I would say that they feed into each other.

53:54 So when one goes out of balance, the other goes out of balance, because your body is trying to always have equilibrium, and so many of our doctors and our teachers and our scientists teach us to just look at anxiety, shoulders up, just focus on the head. But now we're finding that, oh my anxious thoughts produce hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access. I make cortisol, cortisol. Cortisol suppresses inflammation and now I have less, uh, immune system function in my gut. And so then these pathogens that are just hanging out waiting for the perfect moment to take over. They're like now is our chance, guys. So then we get leakiness in the gut, toxins and inflammatory markers, and things now are in the bloodstream. They go into the area of the brain that irritate the blood brain barrier. Now you have inflammation in the brain that tells you you're in danger, and so on and so on and so forth.

54:48 - Chase (Host) It's like two things can be true at the same time.

54:51 - Nicole (Guest) But, knowing where to start the work can make all the difference in the world. Exactly that's so good. Okay, so I want to ask next then, is controlling stress more about reducing alertness or increasing calmness? Ooh, reducing alertness or increasing calmness? So I'm thinking about this in terms of a gas pedal and a brake pedal, right, okay, okay, so let's start with the brake pedal. So if your autonomic arousal has a very bad brake meaning, like, have you ever had a car where you stomp?

55:31 - Chase (Host) the brake and the car is like Nope, it just keeps going. Yeah, I think my first car decided to throw that one on me one time.

55:36 - Nicole (Guest) You're like I guess we're going right, yeah.

55:38 So if your brakes aren't efficient enough, then that means that little things that may make you anxious, it will be hard for you to get out of it, okay, so if that's the case, then your intervention would be different, as opposed to if the littlest amount of gas, the littlest thing, makes your body flare into hyper arousal, right Like someone walks into the room. You weren't expecting them and you have a huge startle response. That may be really sensitive gas and it could go in both directions, right. So the question is is do we need to chill out on the gas or do we need to work on the brakes? And so those interventions are different.

56:18 - Chase (Host) That makes me think if we're becoming more aware of our anxiety and how we respond or don't to it. If someone's listening to that and they go, that's me like no matter kind of what the trigger or what the situation is, I'm all gas all the time. Is that more of an indicator of our lack of awareness of our anxiety and our just kind of lack of tools to kind of, you know, reduce that, that high alert situation? Or is that more of a sign of how bad and how high our anxiety is?

56:49 - Nicole (Guest) I think yes, and yes, and okay, so look at that gas. And so we're going to get into internal family systems. Are you here?

56:55 - Chase (Host) for it. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, this is going to be so good.

56:58 - Nicole (Guest) Okay, so you have that part. We'll say this whoever this person is, all of us in some ways, you have this part that's all gas all the time. Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to notice that part. Where do you feel the all gas all the time? So give me an example of somebody who might feel all gas all the time. Where do you feel that?

57:18 - Chase (Host) Oh, uh chest chest.

57:19 - Nicole (Guest) Okay. So they're like, I feel it in my chest. Their heart's pounding, their breathing is really fast. They're hot Right, just like Ooh right, okay.

57:28 So whoever's listening, if this is you, so I want you to notice that all gas all the time. I want you to feel it in your body. That is an adaptation to something. There's a reason that that's there. It's your job to figure out what it is. So here's a quick exercise that you could do. I call this the three minute hack.

57:44 So I want you to notice. Maybe you'll even close your eyes, and so you're going to notice this feeling. You're going to notice all gas all the time. Where do I feel it? What images come to mind when I feel it? What thoughts come to mind when I feel it? Don't avoid it, don't change anything, just notice it.

57:59 And then what I want you to do is you're going to imagine a timeline, a through line, and you're going to go all the way back to the earliest time that you remember feeling that, and imagine yourself that very first time that you felt that, and I want you to acknowledge that part, and I want you to tell that part. I see you, I hear you, and I want you to know that it's 2024 or whatever year it is for us now it's 2024 and I want you to know that you don't have to protect me anymore, that I have all of the resources that you created for us. And I want to ask you if you would be willing to set down your heavy burden of feeling like you have to take care of us now and just notice what it would feel like to be free of that need to control, that need to hit the gas pedal, and just notice what it would feel like. And then if that part if you can imagine that part and love that part and honor that part and request that part sets down that heavy burden, and then you breathe that in and you lovingly acknowledge that and you make a promise to that part sets down that heavy burden, and then you breathe that in and you lovingly acknowledge that and you make a promise to that part that you're going to check in on them. I'm going to check on you.

59:19 I want you to know. You can trust me, I'm listening, and so if you have anything you need me to know, maybe you can tell me, maybe with a gentle knowing instead of fear in my chest, and then, when you feel complete, then you imagine yourself coming back to that moment and you may even notice that that chest anxiety is a little lighter. And sometimes it's multiple parts, and so if that part feels a little better, but that feeling of chest anxiety is a little different, you're going to do that same exercise. You're going to go down the timeline to the earliest time that you felt that way. You're going to honor it, notice it and you're going to reassure that part. That's what I want you to do.

01:00:00 - Chase (Host) This is why everyone needs to start a podcast, because the level of like billable hour help that you get and that was I so I dropped in with you on that and it took me right back to. We call it day zero in the military, or at least in the army, day zero of bootcamp, which is like just hell day. You know, nothing counts. You can never do anything right. And this is 17 year old, chase, packed into a, a van, a bus, just like herd of cattle, just holding all of our gear, all of our everything, just pack, pack, pack, pack tight, and then just the doors opening and immediately getting yelled at and like I'm pretty sure they're even doing like you know, live fire, not live fire, but just you know noise and yelling and all this stuff and panic and just that's. I had no idea that that thought would come to mind, but just walking through that practice with you of when I think about gas pedal to the floor all the time, that just in my chest, feeling that just memory popped up.

01:01:03 - Nicole (Guest) That's crazy. That's crazy, thank you, thank you. So I so honor that. And he has helped you get where you are. He's a total badass. That pedal to the metal has gotten you where you are and you have those resources in you now where he gets to do whatever the heck he wants. He can go play, he could be artistic, make music, he could do whatever his soul wants because he you did this that.

01:01:28 - Chase (Host) That's crazy. Yeah, love that, um, and you know, kind of speaking of drop into the body. I know that you have um some really interesting ways to understand the types. Nine types of anxiety based on the body um, chest, nervous system, immune system, gut, thought, anger, depressive, endocrine or trauma anxiety. We have some time here. If we could, maybe all of your work and all of these more in expanded versions I'm going to have in the show notes for everybody. But of the nine types of anxiety, what do you think are the top two that most people are dealing with? They know it or they don't.

01:02:08 - Nicole (Guest) If you had asked me this question four years ago, before COVID, I would have given you a different answer. But now that we are endemic COVID, I think that immune system anxiety is sky high for people we are seeing the spike proteins that provide immunity can also be in themselves inflammatory. We also see that so many people were walking around not getting exposed to day-to-day viruses. Lots of people using hand sanitizer, which kills 99.99%, and then those other percents that don't get killed are like free for all Right. So there's a lot of inflammation that's happening, and so there's a chemical in our bodies. Let's see if you can guess what it is. So this chemical in our body can make our nose itchy, runny, our eyes get itchy and runny, pollen outside histamine histamine.

01:03:09 Okay, so a lot of people know that our favorite allergy chemical can also be as stimulating as adrenaline how so?

01:03:18 it stimulates the nervous system. It puts it into fight flight freeze. It stimulates your brain, releases histamine. Every organ in your body releases histamine and it sends your body into fight flight freeze via the amygdala in part. And histamine also can be released by mast cells, and mast cells can also release serotonin and then that can affect our mood. Histamine can affect your gut microbiome. It can affect the way your hormones are produced. They all hang out together. They're all like like you do this, I'll do this. All right, see you on the other side, right? So we're all inflamed, we all have high immune system cells and they're all flying around and we're all anxious reflux. We know histamine can cause digestive issues. We know that histamine can be a huge problem, and so the question in a post-pandemic world is why is this showing up so much? And number one maybe because we have more histamine coming into our system. Number two is that our body is in a state where it's now producing histamine in response to things.

01:04:31 - Chase (Host) I'd be willing to bet it's more of the latter.

01:04:33 - Nicole (Guest) I think you're right. I think that we have changes in our body chemistries that is collectively resulting in us producing more histamine, and then think of it like a great big pitcher, and so we're pouring histamine in, and then we're just producing histamine on the inside, and so we want to drill three holes in the bottom of that picture. And so those are three detoxification pathways. There's DAO, which is detoxification of histamine from the gut. There's methylation, and so that's like your folate, your methylfolate magnesium, and then the other one is liver detoxification through acetylation, and so lots of us have liver inflammation. We sat at home and ate ice cream. We all watched what was the show that was out during oh.

01:05:16 - Chase (Host) Tiger King yeah.

01:05:18 - Nicole (Guest) We all like sat at home and had shot in Freud, and like watched Tiger King, and like ate ice cream and drank record amounts of alcohol.

01:05:26 - Chase (Host) I was going to say I wanted to get your take on alcohol because, um, you, alcohol is a huge like automatic creator for histamine. For I'm pretty sure everybody, yeah, you know you have like certain wines, or at least for me, you know you get kind of congested, you get kind of almost like head coldy ish, and so I think again, kind of during the pandemic period, a lot of people, myself included, consumed a lot more alcohol maybe than they used to. It's kind of like all you could do for a little while, or that was the choice that I made. And uh, yeah, so that, coupled with you know, decrease uh in bacteria and other viral exposures to you know, keep our immune system running top-notch with all the extra alcohol. Not to mention, it's crazy pro-inflammation, um, that histamine, I've never kind of heard that correlation as well.

01:06:12 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah, yeah so. So immune system anxiety is a huge problem. All these people they're like allergies are through the roof and then they go into the doctor, they go to their allergist, they get the spit skin prick test right and they're reacting to everything and they're like I'm allergic to everything being alive. I don't know.

01:06:29 - Chase (Host) Great, now I have more anxiety. Now I'm more anxious, great.

01:06:32 - Nicole (Guest) And then they go to their counselor and they're trying to talk about it and it's like my body doesn't care what I have to say about it and the counselor's like, just breathe. And they're like, don't tell me to breathe. And then they go to the psychiatrist and the they're gaining weight and they have horrible allergies and they don't ever want to breathe again because they're tired of that. So a better way, the more logical way, the more science-based way things move slowly in corporatization right Is if we can figure out okay, I have allergy symptoms. I feel better when I take hydroxyzine. A Benadryl just knocks me out. I'm having anxiety and panic.

01:07:22 Okay, maybe it's immune system anxiety, and so then we can look at the immune system. You could go to the allergist. You have really high markers on everything. The guess is that your immune system is probably not functioning properly, and then you can treat the immune system. So those three detox pathways, amazing Herbs, amazing. So I'm thinking like turmeric, I'm thinking bromelain from papaya, I'm thinking quercetin, I'm thinking stinging nettles, alpha lipoic acid, carnitine, all these wonderful things to help with detoxification, and histamine balancing, which is a whole lot different than an antidepressant. Suddenly we're treating the cause, or at least a cause or removing an obstacle to cure, and so immune system is probably the top one.

01:08:10 - Chase (Host) Fantastic. I want to ask first of all, I want to make sure um are we going to? It's about 1215. Are you good? On time A few more questions.

01:08:18 - Nicole (Guest) Okay.

01:08:18 - Chase (Host) This is um. I'm thoroughly enjoying myself and so many great, great things we're diving into.

01:08:24 - Nicole (Guest) I hope my audience is still with me here.

01:08:27 - Chase (Host) So a couple more questions and then we'll get to it to the end here. Yeah, Do you think the term adrenal burnout, I think, kind of goes hand in hand with high stress, high anxiety and what a lot of people say. Oh, you know, of course you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you have adrenal burnout. Is this real? Is adrenal burnout a fact or a myth?

01:08:44 - Nicole (Guest) I write about this in my book. David was told that he had adrenal fatigue in my book and he did not have adrenal fatigue, he had something genetic which when you guys read the book you'll find out what it is. I don't want to spoiler alert, but what we often associate with adrenal fatigue or adrenal burnout in that form, is usually a multi-systemic lifestyle kind of situation where people are like I'm tired, I have sleeping issues, I'm gaining weight, right, which is different than adrenal insufficiency. So if you're not producing enough cortisol, your blood sugar is going to be low, your blood pressure is going to be low.

01:09:26 When you stand up too quickly, you may get kind of a head rush. You may find that you have to eat often to try to keep your blood sugars up. People will use usually lose weight when they have adrenal insufficiency, and so I think it's a little bit of a lazy diagnosis when a doctor's like oh, we'll just give you a bunch of these herbs to nourish your adrenals, when maybe there are other things that are going on. Maybe their thyroid is out of balance, or maybe it is insulin resistance because they're eating things that are really producing a ton of insulin or blood sugar spiking. So I think that it's adrenal fatigue in its most characteristic form does not exist.

01:10:12 - Chase (Host) Would you ever consider, through prescription or through supplementation or herbs, giving someone, let's say a patient, something because they're in such an acute period of high stress, let's say life, work, panic attacks, just high anxiety? You know, even through navigating through some other modalities like hey look where we're at right now.

01:10:35 I am kind of worried about your adrenals, I am kind of worried maybe that we're overtaxing things and we're working on other things, but right now I would want to give you a medication supplementation to kind of help um, help the adrenals out a little bit. Yeah, what would that look like?

01:10:51 - Nicole (Guest) In the therapeutic order, which is sort of how I conceptualize every single one of my patients the first step is address acute concerns. So if somebody is in crisis, we want to deal with that crisis first. So if somebody is having just horrific panic attacks and they're not able to leave their house or they're not able to go to work or take care of their kids or whatever's happening, then take whatever it is that you need to take to just get through, and then we're going to put a semicolon there instead of a period.

01:11:19 We're going to put a semicolon there and say, okay, I'm going to take the Xanax or I'm going to take the five pounds of theanine, whatever it is, and we're going to put a semicolon there. And then we're going to start doing the deeper work. We're going to figure out what the heck is happening, what are the obstacles to cure. So we're going to do that work. So number two you've addressed acute concerns. Number two is what are the obstacles to cure? Are they drinking too much? Are they not sleeping enough? Are they burning the candle at both ends? Are they not getting any sunshine, fresh air? Do they live in a mold-infested building? Right? What's causing these symptoms?

01:11:54 And then number two is tonifying. Or number three is tonifying weak and damaged systems. And so if we're asking our body to detox, then you want to support the organs of detoxification, like liver and kidneys, right, and bowels. So we want to use natural strategies for that. So, dry skin brushing, alternating hot and cold shower after you take a sauna to rinse off in cold water, because our bodies are eliminating toxins through those. They call them a monk trees. And so the number four is tonifying weakened damage systems. So I think I'm losing track of the numbers, but when you tonify that there we may be asking the adrenals to do a lot of work, like, okay, you have a lot of stuff that you're dealing with and your endocrine system is healthy. We've done the testing. It looks like you're still producing enough, but I want to keep it that way, and so then I might give it to aptogens like ashwagandha.

01:12:49 - Chase (Host) Okay, yeah.

01:12:50 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah.

01:12:51 - Chase (Host) Would there be a set of labs or certain biomarkers you would want someone to look at or we could recommend the general public to look at, to kind of go hey, take how you feel more the qualitative aspect, but based on these labs, we would really want to look at adrenal support or things to reduce stress anxiety.

01:13:11 - Nicole (Guest) I always break them into tiers. I think a lot of doctors will do spray and prey testing, and that could be really expensive for people, and so tier one testing is let's look at your liver, your kidneys, your blood sugars, your electrolytes. Let's look at your thyroid, and when I say thyroid, I'm talking about a full thyroid panel, which I had no idea was so controversial until recently. Really, yeah, I posted on my Instagram like arguing for a full thyroid panel and I have half a million people who are like commenting on this video and they're all fighting about it.

01:13:44 - Chase (Host) Against it.

01:13:45 - Nicole (Guest) Half of them. There's endocrinologists and specialists that are fighting against it. What are they saying?

01:13:49 - Chase (Host) It's TMI for the general public, it's mass information.

01:13:53 - Nicole (Guest) They're like if your TSH is normal, your thyroid is fine, and I'm like I don't think that's correct.

01:13:59 - Chase (Host) That's kind of a bold generalization. I think I'm not a provider.

01:14:04 - Nicole (Guest) Well, so then I just it's super fun because then people learn. But think about it this way You're going to have a kid. Super exciting, thank you. Yeah, so what you'll probably discover unless your kid is like like mother Teresa, um, or Gandhi or somebody amazing who doesn't make poor choices is that when you tell him to go and clean his room let's say he's 10 years old and you're like, go clean your room, you're the, you're the TSH, you're the brain telling the thyroid go clean your room. It's a 50, 50 chance that when you go in there, it's done. And so when we, when the brain is producing TSH, to say, go clean your room, the thyroid may or may not, due to different biofeedback loops, it may or may not do that and it may or may not do that correctly. There's a lot more to the conversation. So you've got to go into that room and see what your little dude is up to right, and so it's the same thing with our basic testing.

01:15:03 Is you have to test thyroid and you want to include TSH, free T3, free T4, and a reverse T3. Include TSH, free T3, free T4, and a reverse T3. Because if your body is in a really high stress state and it's producing all this cortisol. The cortisol is through the roof. You feel wired and tired, you feel anxious and cracked out. All the time. Your blood pressure's high, your sugar's high. You test your thyroid. You may have a bunch of your thyroid that starts to shift out of normal T3 into reverse T3 to try to compensate for all of that demand, all that cortisol. So then you'll feel hypothyroid but you'll also have high cortisol numbers and you will never find that with just a straight up.

01:15:44 TSH test.

01:15:45 - Chase (Host) So, then, is the thyroid, the organ, the part of our body that runs the highest risk of damage should anxiety and stress go unchecked too long term.

01:15:58 - Nicole (Guest) I think it depends on the person. I think it's very important it will show up on basic testing so it's easy to find. So if you do that thyroid panel, which your insurance should cover, and everything else is unchecked, you'll probably see a reverse T3 abnormality or, excuse me, gland.

01:16:14 - Chase (Host) I was a gland, not an organ, right.

01:16:16 - Nicole (Guest) Yeah, okay, right yeah.

01:16:18 - Chase (Host) Again, I'm not a medical provider. I haven't been in clinic in many years, but okay.

01:16:22 - Nicole (Guest) Potato, potato.

01:16:23 - Chase (Host) Yeah, it's brilliant, yeah, so so, um, another question I want to ask is a lot of us have high anxiety prone people in our lives, whether that's a coworker, an employee, a loved one, a partner, a spouse, whatever. What do you think is the number one thing we can do to support someone living with high anxiety that does not then cause us more anxiety?

01:16:51 - Nicole (Guest) I talked about this. My partner who you met is Paul. He's a therapist also, so we met in counseling school.

01:16:59 - Chase (Host) What a great combination.

01:17:00 - Nicole (Guest) It's like the dream team, and so what I've been so grateful for is that we are able to work through things together in partnership, as opposed to like that's your journey.

01:17:15 It's fine to a degree, but we're able to work through it in partnership, and I kind of I've talked to the store about the story a lot, and he won't mind at all is that we were having a conflict one day and I know him, I know he and I've done the timeline exercises, we both have our own therapist, we both talk about it after the fact. He feeds me vitamins, I eat the vitamins, and so he was having a day and I wasn't really on the same frequency and so I was kind of like digging a little bit more and he just got to this point where he balled his fist and he kind of stomped his foot. He's like, oh, and I was like whoa dude, are we 12? What's interesting is that it was an activation of a state that was from his 12 year old self. So I had inadvertently triggered a pattern that he had learned when he was a little guy.

01:18:12 - Chase (Host) It's like when we look at somebody and we think they're acting like a child, their inner child is acting out.

01:18:17 - Nicole (Guest) Exactly.

01:18:18 - Chase (Host) I mean, there's a time and a place, but that's a great learning moment for somebody to go. It's not the person I love or the person I work with right here and right now. Yes, it's their 12-year-old self, their 9-year-old self, their 18-year-old self.

01:18:29 - Nicole (Guest) Yes, and they're all there, we're all composites of them, and so when we figured that out, now I am able to recognize like, ooh, I feel like 12-year-old's getting a little activated right now.

01:18:42 So then it allows me to reflect that back to him if he wants it, and it allows me to have radical allowance. I allow you to have that behavior. I'm not going to enable that behavior, just like he does the same thing for me. He'll allow me to have my experience and it's big, it's ugly and it's beautiful. He's not going to enable that. We're going to encourage each other to keep doing the work, but it's like you said. It's like suddenly I'm able to reflect back to him his lived experience so that he can continue to grow, able to reflect back to him his lived experience so that he can continue to grow. And I think that's the best thing that we can do for our partners is to be collaborators and allowing them to be who they are in their suffering and out of their suffering, and then to help them move forward in that, if they desire that.

01:19:23 - Chase (Host) I want to echo that. I think, just kind of reflecting back on encounters I've had with peers, subordinates, loved ones, my wife, you know friends. I think the thing that has helped us navigate stressful situations and someone going through a very high anxiety time period is me allowing them, and vice versa, to go through it. Because more often than not we just we haven't had that safe container, we haven't had that safe person to allow that feeling, that emotion, that inner child, that whatever, to to come out. Um and so then no wonder we just kind of get stuck and we repeat those same things and we never really get it, we never get it out, and so having just that allowance helps tremendously. Now, of course, if it just repeats, then I found myself especially in more professional dynamics. I need to kind of like interject a little bit more or kind of rein in the container a little bit more, but more often than not allowing it to happen, the situation kind of smoothed itself out, allowing it to happen.

01:20:30 - Nicole (Guest) The situation kind of smoothed itself out. Yeah, you're bringing to mind two things. One is that you have to go through it to get to it. And then the second thing is all the world's a stage and we're reenacting the things that we still haven't learned, and the people in our lives are the actors, and so we go into different scenarios and we have different actors on our stage, and it's all an opportunity for us to make a choice, like how am I going to move forward? What am I here to learn? Just like looking at our symptoms, what is my body telling me that I could do differently, that I could do better, that needs healing. And then suddenly, if we're like Irving Polster and everything is fascinating, then life is really fun. It's like oh wow, we're stuck in traffic and I'm feeling really annoyed. How fun it is to get to live in a body, in a world where I feel this feeling.

01:21:23 - Chase (Host) It kind of helps you get to the humor of it all and not to knock. Look, life is not getting easier, times are not getting easier. We are just realizing our potential more and more and more At least I think anybody in my audience and you know, myself included and with that comes a whole new world of gifts wrapped in the standard definition of problems. And, personally speaking, just that realization what you just talked about helps me get to the humor. And the sooner I can get to the humor and I'm a pretty sarcastic, comedic guy in general, maybe that's a defense mechanism, but it helps me get there faster, which I appreciate. And the sooner I can get to the humor, I can get to the humanity of my situation, of somebody else's situation, and that just dissolves situations a lot faster.

01:22:15 - Nicole (Guest) And that's what you want. Is you want to live in joy? I was just listening to a podcast the other day about how gratitude and joy extends telomere length.

01:22:23 - Chase (Host) Oh, wow, yeah, and those are the caps at the end of our DNA, is right?

01:22:27 - Nicole (Guest) And so if, as we, as we copy our genes, as we copy our DNA, it every single cop replication, it chops off part of the telomere.

01:22:36 - Chase (Host) That's like when we look at um and I had Dr Schultz on the show, I think it was last year Um one of the physicians running the Harvard study we looked at what are the determining factors of uh, I think Americans um, the longest running longitudinal study on health and health. Really it was like an 82, 85 year old study and like the number one determining factor was quality of relationships, meaningful relationships, and I think the subtext there is happiness.

01:23:01 And so I'm sure if we looked at them under the microscope and they did, looking at telomere length and strength. I mean, it's all there. It's all there compared to people who do not have quality relationships or happiness in their life.

01:23:13 - Nicole (Guest) That's made a really big difference in my relationship with my body. Having gone through that dark circle of hell where my body was just like F you, we're done. We're just going to stop sleeping. We're going to have involuntary twitches, we're going to have panic attacks. It's not going to stop. To have gone through that twitches, we're going to panic attacks. It's not going to stop. To have gone through that, to have learned what I learned, that it's not about silencing and suppressing and turning that problem into something that gets pushed beneath the surface, but rather what that was trying to teach me is to then live in just such abundant gratitude that I have a body that is trying to love me and trying to talk to me and that I get to be a part of that.

01:23:53 What a gift. And then when I get anxious now or I feel a little worried now if I just remember that huge paradigm shift, and then it's just like that three minute hack you and I did when we went down the timeline, it's like okay, thank you part for showing me that I honor you. And almost always it's like the stress melts away.

01:24:13 - Chase (Host) Yeah, you just, or just get a few reps in and you'll get there, I promise yeah.

01:24:18 - Nicole (Guest) Like burpees done.

01:24:20 - Chase (Host) Well, this has been incredible. I have so many other questions and ideas. We'll have to have you back, definitely to dive deeper, but my audience can get your book panic proof, the new holistic solution to end your anxiety forever, again linked for you in the show notes and video description box. Everybody but to bring it all home to help us live a life ever forward. That's what this content and guests are here to do, but I always want to get your interpretation of that. So if I were to ask you ever forward, what are those words mean to you? How would you reply?

01:24:48 - Nicole (Guest) I feel like it's the journey that our emotions, our body, takes us on and instead of staying in that comfort zone, instead of staying in that window of tolerance, is allow yourself to think and do and be bigger in such a way that you can live to your highest potential what you've been put here on this planet to learn, see and do in such a way that obliges wonderment and those who are looking on and inspires them just like that projecting out of your energetic bubble where they're just like melting in the bliss that is the present you ever forward.

01:25:24 - Chase (Host) Never a right or wrong answer. I always appreciate every interpretation. So for more information on everything you just heard, make sure to check this episode, show notes or head to everforwardradio.com